Today Really Is The Day To Buy All Of The James Bond Movies

This year marked 50 years since the release of Dr. No, and the inception of James Bond as a big screen movie icon.

Shortly before the release of cinematic release of Skyfall, 20th Century Fox issued a full Blu-ray collection, Bond 50, containing all 22 previous films on region free discs. Rather sweetly, the packaging left space for Skyfall alongside them (see the unboxing video at the foot of the page).

Incidentally – the DVD version appears to have sold out. We’re Blu-ray only here.

All of the 22 films come with their own special features, and then there’s a 23rd disc with more supplements, none of which are actually as good as the film-by-film ones but some of which are silly fun – and if you ever wanted to watch the first 22 James Bond opening title sequences back-to-back in an hour-long marathon, that option is here.

I have a few quibbles with the presentation of one or two of the films. Goldeneye, which is one of my favourites. suffers from too much DNR filtering. This was designed to remove the original grain – grain that I feel should have been left alone. A couple of the early Connery films have suffered from this too, though not to the same degree, and their image has also been run through a second filter to recreate some graininess. Very odd. Why couldn’t they have just left the image alone to start off with?

But I don’t think we’re going to see these films remastered for Blu-ray any time soon, so I’ve lumped it. This is as good as it’s going to get for HD Bond home entertainment I think.

And I should note that the audio seems pretty much flawless across the collection.

We’re getting close to the end of the year, and so many of us can look forward to a little time off from work or study. I always like to stuff those days with some movie marathons – you won’t be surprised to hear – and so I’m wondering if my own Bond 50 might come down off the shelf again…

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